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Posts tagged ‘Wednesday’

President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday en joined politicians in the country to place national interest above every other motives in the new year 2014, adding that they should make Nigeria great and leave a better country to the next generations.

In his words, the president said, “All what we need to do is to make sure that we continue to do things right. That is why I always plead with my fellow politicians that yes we must play the politics but let us take the interest of the country more than our own individual interest. And as we continue to play the politics in that direction, leaders will come and go but the country will stay.”

He further added that, politicians should begin to plan for the next generation instead of wasting all energies on their own personal interests.

He also said that Nigeria has all it takes to be great and to provide leadership for the African continent.

“Luckily, we have a Constitution that says that nobody will be a governor or president forever. It is only in the parliament that you can be there till you die. As long as we consider the interest of our country, children, grand children and we begin to plan for the next generation instead of wasting all our energies to think about ourselves. Before we get to the next 100 years, the country will be better. Nigeria can even change in the next few years and things will be better for everybody.” he said.

The president promised that 2014, will be better than 2013 as he his administration will ensure that sustainable power supply is attained in the country from the middle of this year.

Zuckerberg is the first person aged under 30 to top the list of biggest givers.

The year’s top 15 donors gave a total of $3.4 billion, the Chronicle noted, calling 2013 “notable because of a strong rebound in the number of gifts of $100-million or more.” The total amount of gifts of $100 million or more reached $9.6 billion —a jump of more than one-third over the 2012 figure.

Universities were the big gainers with 12 of the 15 biggest gifts going to higher-education institutes. The University of Michigan received two of those.

Zuckerberg made the same donation last year, 18 million shares of Facebook stock, but in 2012, those shares were valued at much less, worth under $500 million, Forbes reported. With stocks making significant gains in 2013, Facebook shares rebounded as well, nearly doubling Zuckerberg’s net worth from $12.5 billion last year to $25 billion this year.

Nike chairman Phil Knight came in second on the 2013 list, giving $500 million to the Oregon Health & Science University Foundation for cancer research. Outgoing New York mayor Bloomberg was third pledging $350 million to Johns Hopkins University and financier Charles Johnson was fourth for his offered $250 million pledge to Yale.

The others on the list are: Real estate developer Stephen Ross, $200 million pledge to the University of Michigan; real-estate heiress Muriel Block, $160 million bequest to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Yeshiva University; real-estate develoeper John Arrillaga, $151 million pledge to Stanford University; Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs, $133 million pledge to Cornell NYC Tech; Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charles Munger, $110 million pledge to University of Michigan; David Koch, $100 million pledge to New York-Presbyterian Hospital; real-estate developer Frank McCourt, $100 million pledge to Georgetown University; investor Ronald Perelman, $100 million pledge to Columbia Business School; United National Corporation chairman T. Denny Sanford, $100 million pledge to the University of California at San Diego; financier Stephen Schwarzman, $100 million pledge to Tsinghua University; and real-estate heiress Deborah Joy Simon, $100 million pledge to Mercersburg Academy.

An embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, says the attack happened at around 6:40 a.m. Wednesday, when “two rounds of indirect fire impacted the U.S. Embassy compound.” Indirect fire can refer to either mortars or rockets.

The Taliban claimed they fired four rockets at the embassy on Wednesday and inflicted heavy casualties. But the insurgents often exaggerate their claims.

Robertson’s granddaughter, Sadie Robertson, who appears on the show, also subtlety weighed in on the controversy on Wednesday.

A&E has yet to react to the online protests and appears to be standing by its decision to put Robertson on an indefinite hiatus.

In his interview with GQ, Robertson’s anti-gay comments included a paraphrasing of biblical passages that opposed homosexual behavior.

“[You] start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there — bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” Robertson told GQ.

“It seems like, to me a woman would be more desirable [than a man]. … That’s just me,” Robertson added in the interview. “She’s got more to offer,” he continued. “I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

The comments were met with immediate criticism from the gay rights organization GLAAD, a spokesperson for which said that Robertson’s remarks were not reflective of how “true Christians” view gays, considering “Phil and his family claim to be Christian.”

Robertson subsequently issued a statement through A&E, in which he said he “would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me,” however his “mission … is to go forth and tell people about why I follow Christ and also what the Bible teaches, and part of that teaching is that women and men are meant to be together.”

“This person was struck by the fact we have quite a few Confederate images,” college spokeswoman Carol Kerr, told the Times. “[Lee] was certainly not good for the nation. This is the guy we faced on the battlefield whose entire purpose in life was to destroy the nation as it was then conceived . . . This is all part of an informed discussion.”

Army Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, the commandment of the college, said that inaccurate rumors were spread about the removal of the portraits because a faculty member took them down as part of the inventory process. He nonetheless confirmed that changes would be made.

“There will be change: over the years very fine artwork has been hung with care — but [with] little rationale or overall purpose,” he said Wednesday in a statement on the school’s website.

“I will . . . approach our historical narrative with keen awareness and adherence to the seriousness of several things: accurate capture of U.S. military history, good, bad and ugly; a Soldier’s life of selfless service to our Nation; and our collective solemn oath to defend the Constitution of the United States (not a person or a symbol, but a body of ideals). Those are the things I will be looking to reinforce with any changes to the artwork.”

Two portraits of Lee are on display at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and his portrait is also on the walls of other military institutions and government buildings, according to the Times.

The Army War College was established in 1901 in Carlisle, Pa. for the study of lessons in warfare, and the institution has been the making of future field generals. It graduates more than 300 U.S. officers, foreign students, and civilians in two classes each year, according to the Times.

Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia for the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. Six months after surrendering to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Lee swore allegiance to the Constitution and to the Union.

In 1975, Congress enacted a joint resolution reinstating Lee’s U.S. citizenship, stating, “This entire nation has long recognized the outstanding virtues of courage, patriotism and selfless devotion to duty of General R.E. Lee.”

“Intolerants” are “hatin'” on “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says, complaining that his suspension from his family’s reality show is an attack on all Americans.

“Free speech is an endangered species,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday beneath a picture of herself posing with the A&E Network‘s reality stars. “Those ‘intolerants’ hatin’ and taking on the Duck Dynasty patriarch for voicing his personal opinion are taking on all of us.”

Robertson told the magazine — in anatomical terms — that being with a woman “would be more desirable” for a man. “She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

He went on to say that “neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers — they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

Palin and the Duck Dynasty family, including Robertson, have gotten close in recent weeks. They hosted the one-time vice-presidential nominee in Louisiana to help her promote her bestseller “Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas,”reports Breitbart, and she has been quoted as being “happy, happy, happy” that her children believe the Duck Dynasty family is “cooler” than she is.

“Suggesting that people who hold to what every branch of the Christian faith has held to for 2,000 years is somehow bigoted or hateful is not productive for speech,” Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said.

“Silencing views one doesn’t agree with, rather than engaging them, is hardly open-minded.”

Further, Moore pointed out that A&E hired Robertson to be “comedic and sometimes shockingly homespun.” He admitted he found Robertson’s anatomical comments “ill-advised and crude, but that doesn’t seem to be where the controversy lies.”

But instead of suspending Robertson, Moore said on his blog, “why not engage one another, and have the debates in a civil fashion, without attempting to silence one another? Let’s have the sort of cultural conversation that allows us to seek to persuade each other, not to seek to silence one another with intimidation. That’s what real diversity is all about.”

For the second day in a row, the Ohio Republican held a news conference to complain about the far right influence that’s being felt in the House from outside conservative groups, reports Roll Call. Just like in Wednesday’s media gathering, he didn’t bother hiding his frustration.

“Frankly, I think they are misleading their followers,” Boehner told reporters. “I think they’re pushing our members in places where they don’t want to be, and frankly I just think they’ve lost all credibility.”

He noted that conservative groups “pushed us into this fight to defund Obamacare,” leading to the two-week government shutdown in October, which the House leader said “wasn’t the strategy I had in mind.”

“The day before the government reopened, one of these groups stood up and said, ‘Well, we never really thought it would work.’

“Are you kidding me?” Boehner exclaimed.

The Ohio Republican insisted his criticism of conservative groups is nothing new, but “there just comes a point where some people step over the line.”

“I don’t really think that I’ve said anything new or anything different than what I’ve felt and what I’ve said in the past,” he continued.

As he did on Wednesday, Boehner criticized some groups for speaking out against the spending deal reached Tuesday by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray, even before all the details of their proposal had been released.

“When you have no idea what you’re criticizing, it undermines your credibility,” he said.

The House is scheduled to vote on the Ryan-Murray budget Thursday night. Boehner said that even though many Republican members are protesting the measure, it is his “job and obligation to stand up for conservatives in Congress who want more deficit reductions and stand up for the work that Chairman Ryan did.”

The bipartisan plan, Boehner stressed, balances the national budget within 10 years while not raising taxes. While not having everything Republicans might want, he said it “takes giant steps in the right direction” for the country without compromising core conservative principles.